Video Hardwar Optimizations?

Couple things that works for all systems.. some only available to newer systems.. rule of thumb things.. not just for this game.

1.) System RAM. the more the better. The more you can load into system memory, the less time the app has to read disk. 1GB is good, 2GB is better, 3 GB is overkill, but nice if you can swing it. Windows XP Professional will only handle 3GB RAM Max. So 4 is pointless.

2.) And app like SEV won't make a huge difference between modern CPU's. a 2.8Ghz CPU to a 3.2 Ghz would be nearly unnoticeable with this app, considering CPU cache and system RAM were identical. However, Dual Core CPU's COULD maybe give a slight increase for this app, but probably not worth the price for this app alone. In general use a dual cpu does indeed add significant gains in performance using apps such as Visio 2007 and the like.

3.) If you have the ability on your MB to use SATA-2 hard disk's.. use them! 1.5 gigbits vs 80 megabits for IDE/ATA hard drives is a vast performance increase in read/write times. If you can swing 2 SATA-2 drives, they can write data between themselves at 3GBPS! Most new systems either ship with SATA-2 drives, or have ports on the board that use them. SATA is good, SATA-2 is better.

4.) RAID. If you board supports it.. run RAID 0 for max speed. This uses two hard disks, to maximize read/writes. Running RAID0 across SATA-2 hard disks makes very significant performance increases, especially in gaming.

5.) Video Subsystem. PCI is good, AGP is better, PCI-Express is the top currently. Nvidia or ATI is your best bet, due to largest installed base, as well as very frequent graphics driver updates, to make sure you are getting the most from your card. SLI (Nvidia) and Crossfire (ATI) allows you to equipe 2 video cards working together for truly amazing video performance. For those with a few bucks to through around, this is ideal, but does require a special motherboard to support it, because it requires 2 PCI-E Graphics slots and a chipset from Nvidia or ATI ON the board to work. SEV doesn't tax my video subsystem in any way, it isn't an advanced video engine, so you wont come close to even waking a serious video system up with these cards, but outside of SEV, it is a huge improvement.

thats my thoughts.

Robert

More like PCI sucks, AGP is liveable, PCI-E is good. SLI / Crossfire don't give much if any improved performance on many games, even those that strain video cards, and cost far, far more than simply going with a more powerful video card to start with.

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